Fantastic Four #12: Hulk vs The Thing Round 1

Fantastic Four #12, page 18, panel 1

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Jack Kirby

Inking: Dick Ayers

Lettering: Art Simek

Here it is folks, the first punch thrown in one of comicdom’s most enduring rivalries. At this stage in the Marvel Universe, the Thing and the Hulk are clearly the two strongest and toughest people around. Namor comes close, but Fantastic Four #9 showed that without the intervention of the storm, Ben would have triumphed over the Sub-Mariner.

So it’s surprising that the first meet-up between the two should be so brief. This panel is the entirety of their fight. After teasing us with the cover and with Ben’s imagining of the fight earlier in the book, this punch-up is a bit of a disappointment in its brevity and how quickly Ben goes down.

Thankfully, there would be more than a few rematches over the years…

The result: The Hulk wins by a country mile – Ben doesn’t even have the chance to produce a corny quip, instead hitting the ground like a sack of bricks. 1-0 to the Hulk